Now just take the blood you’ve stored in your covid free child b a c k, and give him his old sick blood back…
Has any of the life extension space produced anything like, real?
My information is about a decade out of date, for reasons which I will explain later because it is an interesting and semi related story. But I recall from the days that humanity+ magazine still posted blog articles that there were about seven processes in the human body that causes aging (don’t ask me which seven or how to evaluate the research so take this all with a bit of salt). And I’d assume that all seven of them are important and need to be dealt with at the same time. Also there was interesting and effective life extension research done on mice with both low kcal (but that didn’t research life quality) and blood transfusions, but I have no idea if this ever scales up to humans. A long time ago SSC did find a ‘all those nootropics you take, how effective are they really according to the science?’ site and iirc the only thing that really was effective (for being more productive/smart as that is the focus of LW) was caffeine, and some minor others but 90% of them didn’t work (sadly I don’t hve a link, but iirc this was based on actual science and not the normal SSC selfreports (which it did slightly match iirc but the self reports had a lot of ‘I touched grass’, ‘I worked out’, ‘I took the meds my doc said I should take’, and ‘I slept a normal amount’ things which also were effective nothing really groundbreaking seems there isn’t an easy hack (which should loop back into the anti-aging thing which I assume there also isn’t an easy hack, so Quikin is right, eat those veggies).
CW: one reference to transphobia, and a long rambling post about the blog part of the humanity+ magazine, and some public people related to that.
So there that is what I can recall and have glanced about the anti-aging stuff, now for the H+ magazine gossip (CW: reference of transphobia, of course). H+mag used to be a blog/magazine which regularly posted articles about all kinds of transhumanist subjects, from robotics to anti-aging to a bit ‘woo’ articles about greater humanity (don’t get me wrong those articles were fine, I thought the ‘woo’ articles (and that is my phrasing, it wasn’t as bad as I make it out to be, but it was a bit woo for a transhumanist magazine) were interesting and it fitted with the idea of H+ to be a humanist transhumanist organization. After all, we should all benefit from technological advances, and people should not be left behind. And then suddenly the constant trickle of H+ articles in my rss reader stopped. That confused me, esp as the last article (in my rss reader) was a imho pretty normal post from the (iirc) main guy behind the magazine/blog who said that we should make sure that everybody benefits from transhumanism and that we should be careful with rightwing people in the movement who don’t want that. This article no longer exists (well the whole blog no longer exists, and the url is dead), it was deleted so quickly that the normal cache things like google or the wayback machine didn’t index it, and the only reason I had seen it was because my rss reader had kept a local copy. After this the blog/mag basically was dead, there were a couple more articles posted but the amount went from several a week to one a month. I have no idea who pulled the plug, but it is pretty worrying, as apparently some of the C-suite of H+ are not that onboard with everybody sharing in the transhumanist future. (That Natasha Vita-More (ex-director) wrote an transphobic ‘you cannot change gender/sex’ thing somewhere 2018 (how can you be into transhumanism and think this? How can you want to live forever in such a way that you refuse to give your age, but be so weird about trans people. I’m not mad, I’m disappointed) is worrying. Ben Goertzel, who used to be big into robotics and AI latest book (in 2018 according to wikipedia) was about PSI (I’m sure he will be back to AI soon now that that is popular). So this is all pretty weird. Vita-More also follows a few d/acc accounts (which is one of those techno optimist offshoots from concurrency people) and various libertarian causes things. So what I think is what happened with h+ mag is that the right libertarians and the left humanist/socialist/etc in the transhumanist movement got into an early clash re the upcoming culture wars (iirc this was before the start of the online culture wars of 2014) and this split large parts of the movement apart and caused a more inward focus vs the broader popularization and optimism of the early 2010s. This idea is also slightly matched by the history timeline of transhumanism kept by the H+ people. (also note im not saying the H+ people are far right (while doing a quick skim I even saw Vita-More had spoken against the far right (on the subject of AI but still, being against the far right good (that she did it by platforming a steve bannon goon is bad however)), I’d think most of them are just californian ideologians/libertarians who don’t want to be really bothered by the culture wars because they just want to live forever). But it is interesting how weird it all got, and how the hypewave of the 2010s seems to have died down re-anti aging. (Of course what is more likely is just that my sources into reading this all disappeared and I see that as the hype wave drying up, anyway talked about the H+mag blog stuff on reddit before but don’t think I have ever talked about it here, so here is my long rambling post (I also did a lookup on what some of the visible people, most of it was silent after 2018, but it seems various things (like the H+mag facebook page (yes very retro)) are starting up again this year guess the hype is back!).
none of Aubrey de Grey’s longevity stuff really worked out, and then he got kicked out of the org he founded for sexual harassment
Not a big shock.
Wasn’t Racheal Haywire involved with that?
Sorry doesn’t ring a bell, Im pretty bad with names anyway.
Tis for the better!
Rachel Haywire
Now that’s a rabbit-hole. As far as I can tell, she ran (runs?) a facebook group called “Humanity 2.0”. She “leaves neoreaction” every few years and is back within months. In 2019 she violated the by-laws of the Transhumanist Party elections by mentioning “Jeffrey Epstein or the history of Humanity+”. What they mean is that mentioning that Epstein donated $100,000 to Humanity+ in 2011 “hurts the public image of transhumanism”.
She apparently ran for Humanity+ President in 2013, lost(?), trash-talked Natasha Vita-More, who withdrew H+ support from Haywire since? It’s not clear, a lot of links are dead/scrubbed since then.
http://transhumanist-party.org/tag/rachel-haywire/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/transhumanistparty/posts/2389157701305002/
https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Haywire
https://snoo.habedieeh.re/r/Transhuman/comments/139x2s/natasha_vitamore_vs_rachel_haywire/ (alternative reddit frontend)Bonus: Ye Gods, her interview with an Urbit developer is really, truly, amazingly awful: https://archive.is/5I7Td
Bonus: Ye Gods, her interview with an Urbit developer is really, truly, amazingly awful: https://archive.is/5I7Td
how does it always come back to urbit?
The goal of my interview with you is to find out more about the technology behind Urbit, rather than focusing on its social scene like that annoying group of journalists desperate for their 15 minutes. So, let’s take some time to get to the core of Urbit’s technology.
I can only skim it for now, but it feels like this article deserves its own post. it looks like this was written as a reaction to the articles we’ve already seen that call out how fucking weird the fascists around urbit and the community/cult they’ve formed are; notably, the summary of urbit’s history here specifically elides any talk about the neoreactionary politics that led Yarvin to start urbit in the first place (references to which are themselves scattered across the system’s early specs)
also it’s Rachel fucking Haywire
It probably does deserve its own post, I’m not sure I can do it justice. “Urbit is an attempt to make computers great again”, the phrase “from scratch” appears 7 times, “Urbit is doing God’s work to make the perfect computer”, [in a linked tweet] “Urbit fulfills prophecy”.
I missed the comments section at first. “This is one of the things Urbit got right. Especially useful to pique people’s interest and keep them invested by giving them a unique, cool identity.” Jurij claiming that Urbit is amazing because…usernames?
And then there’s the link to Plunder, which the NixOS-heads will have to investigate to figure out what it does.
“Plunder is a new programming model where programs run forever. Hardware restarts are invisible to the software, as is moving a running program from one physical machine to another.”
Finally, Haywire has such lovely readers as squints “Eva Brawn”.
oh I got you covered! as soon as I get the chance I’ll draft a new urbit thread for this. I believe our last one covered Plunder which is indeed a trip from a Nix standpoint; I should dig that thread up to reference
urbit is the most unintentionally funny software ever created, the more posts about it the better
Ye Gods, her interview with an Urbit developer is really, truly, amazingly awful: https://archive.is/5I7Td
It always surprises me to discover that there are actual true believers who are worried how to build Urbit on web3, and who fret that Urbit is not compatible with AI. This in the same piece that states that Urbit might be finished/usable in 100 years. Do they really believe that web3 and AI are gonna be around then?
Also LOL that LLM can’t grok Hoon. It’s a backhanded compliment, but a compliment nonetheless.
Urbit might be finished/usable in 100 years
In the comments someone asks the dev Jurij “What is the killer application or feature that I must have?” and he replies “No one knows.”
The killer app is to filter out the fascists and gather them in one convenient place.
See also Yarvin’s idea about people opting out of “the Cathedral” and suddenly taking power.
The Cathedral was such a good memetic thing, super attractive to talk about for anybody with NRx/far right brainworms, incomprehensible why you would use that term to normal people, and made you instantly recognizable as a person to be careful around for anti-fascists, or person of interest for any gov orgs looking into people radicalizing. A bit like the globohomo dogwhistle, it fails because it just looks weird to normal people. At least the alt-right picked a cartoon as their icon.
Also LOL that LLM can’t grok Hoon
what this means is that there isn’t a mountain of Hoon code on StackOverflow for Copilot to crib. I wonder if he understands that’s the reason.
It’s not clear, a lot of links are dead/scrubbed since then.
That happens a lot with this H+ related stuff there also just seem to be periods where there is no content to mix it all up. (which, if you are going to be a bit delete happy is a good way to hide your deletions in the void, but in our advertisement seo driven world this is not a good method if you want to become well known and get your ideas out there, but I’m digressing and I don’t know the real goals of anybody here).
But yeah, looked into Haywire and got a bad vibe from her (and an annoying vibe, I don’t know how to put it into words yet, but I have noticed it in places, a sort of manic tech positivist (which can still be negative about the tech in a criti-hype way) writing of boundless opportunities and everything going faster and quicker and better just across the horizon, Don’t get left behind! But it remains all words and there is the vague stench of far right/libertarian bs, and no actual real tech. Manic Pixie I Fucking Love Science posting (this is not great as it misses the spiritual element of this style of posting, but I have not found the correct words to describe it, in the case of Haywire that she is an industrial goth musician fits).
Vaguely related but calling the discussion between Haywire and Vita-More a catfight (in the link to some (now dead) Kurzweil forum) is a bit of that unconscious sexism which happens a bit in tech spaces (I’m just assuming it wasn’t intentional).
Also I might have physically let out a groan due to the ‘trigger warning’ magazine name.
got a bad vibe from her
the bad vibe is that she’s been techfash forever
Yeah sorry, the bad vibe was 10 hours ago, did more reading and came to that conclusion. A 2012 neo-reactionary.
a long history of being one of those names you see and go “this asshole again”
Has anyone else told you that the nested parentheses make your writing hard to read? Not a sarcastic or rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know if I’m the only one who has a hard time with them, especially when you don’t close them lol
It’s short a few commas and at least 1 open parenthese was never closed, which doesn’t help readability, but what I miss most, is paragraph breaks. Had your comment not piqued my curiosity, then I wouldn’t even have begun reading that super long paragraph.
I am also a terminal parentheticalist - it’s something you frequently get with NDs fwiw (Not that I know whether the other commenter is (but I most certainly am (and thus thought of as mention as to where it often happens)))
(Okay that’s a mildly unnecessary example but demonstrates what I meant either way)
I definitely get the impulse! When there are a lot of them though, I feel like I spend as much time trying to understand the structure of the paragraph as I do reading it.
“impulse” strikes me as an odd word choice - this is literally how I (and as I observed, other NDs too) communicate
that said, I’m stopping here
it’s something I actually quite enjoy about their writing style, though I also frequently choose to write Lisp
Eating green leafy vegetables correlates with longer lifespan.
the supposed life extending properties of a glass of red wine every day are an excellent way to turn a wine mom into a full blown alcoholic
Any thoughts on how you’d define real?
Non-woo, actually does something good.
Yes, how would you define “does something good”? Live another year?
What it boils down to this: can you provide a concrete example of a metric that you’d accept as proof that it actually does something good? If not, then you’re just setting up a moving goal, and saying “bring me a rock”
That’s exactly what scientists are supposed to do. You can’t ask a random person on a forum to come up with a solid experiment setting…
Let me rephrase the original question: are there any solid, peer-reviewed studies, that have looked into life-extension and concluded a positive effect?
I can ask a random person on a forum asking about arbitrary levels of “realness” to solidify what they mean.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m not asking for metrics that prove, without a doubt that something works. That is clearly what scientists should be doing, not, as we agree, a random person on the internet.
I’m asking for what metrics OP would accept as evidence that would convince them something works. That is something that scientists would not have a say in.
Would peer reviewed papers qualify? Would a random blogpost? Where is their bar set for things that would actually change their mind?
I’m actually not sure where the line is drawn for “life extension”, and would appreciate your two cents. Does a healthy diet, regular exercise, and ample sleep fall under that in your experience? Why or why not?
I know this guy does a lot of super off the wall techy stuff, but the foundation of what he focuses on seems to be pursuing these things (diet, sleep, exercise) with militaristic discipline.
most sealion shit I’ve seen in a while
Haha yeah, my b, I came here from browsing all and didn’t realize that was a rhetorical question and that y’all are just here to vent.
this is expressly not debate club
OP asks question
I ask for what would be an acceptable answer
This is not debate club.
Sounds good boss.
Alternatively,
Y’all seem to know a lot about “life extension” as a category, idk who the names you’re talking about even are.
I ask for y’all’s opinions about what counts as life extension.
This is not debate club
🫡
let’s not
I guess this counts as long Covid, although I associate it more with brain fog and similar symptoms.
Either way, “lung capacity of an 18-year-old” and “15% loss of lung capacity” can’t both be true, unless he’s suggesting he started with super-lungs.
long covid is a whole lot of things. Asthma, diabetes, depression… the identifiable things that sonofabitch virus can do to the human body appear to be legion.
Tbqh I think a lot of the “long covid” symptoms are just things people weren’t treating before.
[edited because I was too snarky and now I feel bad]
I urge you to read the research here if you don’t believe in long covid’s reality, severity, or frequency. But yes, obviously a new chronic and devastating illness will exacerbate any pre-existing conditions; that’s how chronic illness works.
Didn’t deny long covid was a thing, but I’m glad you agree it isn’t the primary reason why the morbidly obese are developing diabetes.
Wow i gave you the benefit of the doubt and i have to stop doing that.
Something tells me I can guess what you think gave you diabetes.
holy shit fuck off
You gave 'em the benefit of the doubt, but you can take it right back. :-)
I think it’s just that we never really addressed the fact that you don’t fully bounce back from illness. But then suddenly, everyone got this serious illness, and at the same time we realized “I just don’t feel like I did before, even now that I’ve recovered”
That’s just my personal feeling, it’s not based on much except our attitudes about illness
Or he now has the lung capacity of a 15% smaller 18 year old.
a large lung the size of a small lung
“A lung small in the same way a large one isn’t” ~ T. Pratchett
Eats the same bland meal every day of his life. Takes an ungodly number of pills every morning. Uses his son as his own personal blood boy. Has given himself a physical appearance that can only be described as “uncanny valley”.
I’ll never understand the extremes some of these tech bros will go to deny the inevitability of death.
Why isn’t there a tech bro equivalent of Battle Creek Sanitarium yet.
It’s been decentralized.
An extremely rich person who surrounds himself with doctors & has shown himself willing & able to inconvenience himself practically & socially to extend his life has *no* excuse for getting covid in November 2022.
I can’t believe I’m blaming a dude for catching covid, but by late 2022, having: an enormous sum of cash; the ability & willingness to be weird & uncomfortable; medical professionals on hand; & an overwhelming obsession with your own health makes it thoroughly your own fault.
Did he get all the vaccines?
Stop using ampersands.
STOP USING AMPERSANDS
- years of typography but no practical use found for fancy and
- wanted to write shorter sentences anyway for a laugh? we had a tool for that: it’s called “emojis”
- “yes, please give me some A&W root beer to wash down my mac & cheese” — statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged
look at what the ampersand users have been demanding our Respect for this whole time, with all the & & & we’ve built for them:
they have played us for absolute fools
The ampersands gets converted to HTML (aka & by various clients).
In general, it’s a good idea to never use ampersands on the web. A lot of sanitizers do not process them properly.
@Scary_le_Poo @self what First Day On The Computer shit is this?
haha wtf this is hilarious
Sounds like a “not my problem” kind of problem & I don’t see why I should care.
Man this is next level cargo cult “security” thinking.
Here’s a protip: logoff and delete your account, it’s the only way to be safe.
The majestic breadth of human language should not be truncated for some buggy soulless machine (heck not even that here, but the fear of one)
It’s a good idea to never use shitty sanitizers on the web, but a great idea to use tags, ampersands, brackets, semicolons, commas, and dashes with great gusto to seek them out wherever they may be hiding.
Computer may say no, but Sailor Sega Saturn says oh yes.
what in the fuck
no fuck off with this. holy fuck I hate that this is your reason to hassle one of my users
I love everyone in this bar.
this made me laugh out loud thank you
Just to check for the tiniest chance of good faith – are you having some kind of accessibility issue with ampersands, or are you an extremely weird troll? I’m assuming the latter but if so it’s one of the weirdest swing-an-a-miss trolls I’ve seen in a while.
I think you mean “swing & a miss”
:-P
The ampersands gets converted to HTML (aka & by various clients).
In general, it’s a good idea to never use ampersands on the web. A lot of sanitizers do not process them properly.
I’m guessing that you are a good bit older (50s/60s), otherwise you would probably know this already.
No one is “comin’ fer yer ampersands”, but it’s worth knowing that on the internet they aren’t a great idea.
oh my fuck I banned them before I even saw this
yeah we must be a fair bit older if we don’t buy their bullshit html sanitization ploy. no idea what web dev is here!
“a lot of sanitizers don’t process them properly” holy fuck
it seriously took them 21 hours to come up with an excuse, and their excuse is it’s impossible to do the parts of html sanitization you can do with a basic regex and nothing else
fuckin ampersands man how the fuck do they work
I think literally the last place I actually had this kind problem was a case of mojibake in filenames for things that started on a windows fs served under iis, that then went to a btrfs store and chilled there for a while (like, 6+ years and however many kernels), then rsync’d onto a zfs box (on bookworm)
And I literally just slapped the names through a python auto-remapper library after like 5min of searching to fix shit…
This has got to be a bit, in my very online time I have never seen somebody complain about &s hell even with the \ I have never seen people go ‘don’t use the backslash’ just people explain to others why the backslash behaves a bit weird (or how you can escape other characters with it, like for example the &).
@Soyweiser @self just base64-encode everything then learn to read base64 in your head
